Remember this?

This quilt top had been hanging around for a long time. I had tried quilting it 3 times only to end up with puckering. We had a Chris Kenna workshop at our club last year and I was talking with her about the problem I was having. She suggested grid-basting it with soluble thread. So I did and it worked a treat. I was able to free-motion the whole thing with no puckering at all. It is weird, though how it looks so rippled when only parts of it are quilted. It is not until the quilting is finished that it lies flat. It is now called Left Over Tabasco Sauce
 

Here is a a close-up of the quilting:

I haven't been totally Idle . . .

I haven't really been totally idle over the 6 months since I last blogged. Really!

I had a lovely quilting time at my friend, Lorraine's place last weekend. I sewed a few crumb blocks together into this top and spent the rest of the time making more!

I love to sew crumb blocks when my brain won't cope with anything more demanding. I don't worry about matching or exact 1/4" seams or which way seams get pressed. I just sew. I find it really soothing and it usually warms me up to go onto something more demanding. This top, when it has had an accent border and a final border on it, is destined to become a community quilt. Pretty busy quilt top, eh?

A Memory of NZ

During the holidays one of my home stay boys returned home to Germany. He had been with me for six months and had been a real joy to have. Very outgoing and good company. He wanted something quilted to take home so, while he was on a 3 day holiday in Auckland before he left NZ, I made him this:

Needless to say he was visiting the sky tower on the day I made the quilt. It is from Gail Lawther's book "Glimpses of New Zealand". I bought this book when it first came out but this is the first time I have made anything from it. I started at 4 am (sleepless night in the middle of the holidays!!) drawing the pattern to full size. Then I went back to bed for a bit more shut-eye. I got up at about 8.30am, selected fabrics and started sewing it. It was finished and the binding was on, ready for hand stitching down, by 10pm that night! That is a pretty quick quilt - but I admit I had 3 days to myself so there was boiled eggs and toast soldiers for dinner that night.Altogether a perfect quilting day.

I highly recommend Gail's book. Apart from the subject matter, of which I am undoubtedly biased, the book is a sampler of many different quilting techniques in a manageable format. It would make a great series of tutorials for a group of newish quilters looking to learn non traditional techniques.

Press and Seal

Hi
Long time, no blog, no real excuse except life has been really busy.

I had a lovely 'day in the country' sewing day with Janice yesterday. I took along "Tabasco Sauce", the top I made oh, was it a couple of years ago?, from the left-over blocks I made for the Cotton On Quilters Banner Janice and I made for our Club. I finally got around to basting it up and was trying to decide how to quilt it. Janice recommended using Press and Seal to cover the quilt. I could then draw all over the Press and Seal to get an idea of how I want to section the quilting:

This is a way cool idea to audition quilting designs. Janice says NOT to sew through the Press and Seal. She says to just cut it apart to reveal the section to be worked on. Here are some close-ups:

 

Janice also gave me a quick lesson on zentangle quilting and here is her quick plan for quilting "Tabasco Sauce":

Now I am too late!

You may remember I blogged a wee while ago how I went to Stratford to see the National Association of New Zealand Quilters Illumination exhibition. This weekend was the first chance in February to get to see it. According to the literature it was on until 28 Feb. Alas the exhibition was taken down 3 days ago. Fortunately (I guess) I had telephoned the gallery to see if it was still on and they gave me the news that I had just missed it. Oh well, never mind.

I did still go through Stratford today because I had already decided to take my German international home stay student, along with 3 of his friends to New Plymouth (the idea was I would stop at the gallery on the way there - we stopped in Hawera instead for an ice cream).  We were going to visit a buthers shop we had heard about that sold German sausages. Alas, that shop had closed suddenly just before Christmas.

We weren't going to let that get us down either. The weather was perfect and the place was abuzz with the theme of Americana, classic cars and the Cliff Richards concert. I visited my friend Judy along with the fabric shops and the New Plymouth library. The kids went clothes shopping and loved it, way better than Wanganui according to them. They instantly demanded I rent a house so they could live there :-)  Yeah, right!

On the way back I had a good laugh as we passed a farm whose cows had very recently wandered to the milking shed which was close to the road, and another farm making sileage. The kids all pulled their tee shirts over their noses. Good rural smells I told them.

Off it goes - without the label!

I did finish quilting this quilt a couple of weeks ago but since school started I have had little time to sit at the computer to make a post (well, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it). He, of Honey Bunch fame, moved on Sunday to his new flat for his second year at Uni.This quilt was supposed to be finished a whole year ago, ready fall the Halls of Residence. Well, only a year late. At least I got it done for the new flat:-)
It is called 'City Slicker'

The only trouble was I forgot to sew a label on it and when I remembered I ran out of time.I hope he looks after it!

The colour above isn't quite true. This close up of the quilting is better:

I must have been on holiday for too long!

Yesterday I took Frances to Stratford to see the NANZQ Illumination Quilts exhibition in the Percy Thompson Gallery. You may remember I had a this quilt accepted into this touring exhibition and it has sold.
We had a nice stop in Hawera where we visited the Cinnamon Lodge quilt shop (hope I got the name right) where I found some delicious fabric that just had to come home with me. We had a lovely morning tea at the Little Grans cafe that was open. Well I had coffee of course, and so did Frances so I guess it was morning coffee, not morning tea. I spied some lovely home-made looking custard squares and was ready to put one on my plate when I glanced along the cabinet and saw they also had Eccles cakes. What does a girl choose when there are two old fashioned favourites vying for her attention?*

Why have I been on holiday for too long? Because when we got to the gallery in Stratford there were no quilts! The gallery assistant didn't know anything about any quilts. Huh? I must have got it wrong. Off I go to find a magazine shop so I can check the entry in NZ Quilter. The exhibition doesn't start until 29 January. Well doh, I know it is January but I have no idea what the actual date is, I'm on holiday!

I'm not sure why the gallery assistant didn't know the exhibition is starting in a week's time. I will have to phone the gallery to check that it is actually going to be on.

To save a bit on the disappointed feeling we found the shop in Stratford which sells quilting fabric, quite a bit of it. I didn't know Stratford had a quilt shop. It is called In Stitches. Well, they sell other sewing supplies as well but they had a good selection of fabric and I got some great bargain priced fat quarters and some lovely paisley fabric in a dark green and red with caramel combination. Maudette, the owner, was very friendly and helpful, especially considering we were there right at closing time and stayed for about half and hour or so!


*She gets both and eats half of each one so that she can take the other half of each cake for a picnic lunch at school the next day, where she is going to start preparing for the new school year. By the way, what ever happened to Battenburg cake, no one makes that old fashioned cake any more do they?

My New Best Friend

Hello, My name is Helen and I am a Blogger. It has been 36 days since my last blog . . . Oh dear, I think I should rename myself as the Monthly Blogger!

During the summer holidays I have been having a nice and relaxed time. I have been spring cleaning and sewing and quilting and spring cleaning and moving furniture around and spring cleaning and sorting the stash and cleaning and tidying and cleaning and . . . you get the picture.

Anyway, I wanted to show you my new best friend (which I have had since May of last year but have only just got around to blog about) and it is my new Sew Ezi table. These little tables are just fantastic and I wish I had bought one years ago. I had seen them at the first Hamilton Quilt and Craft Fair but didn't think they looked all that sturdy and the price seemed expensive for a small table. Was I wrong? Way wrong!

You have to understand that I have an Elna 6005 which does not come with any kind of flat bed, just a little box that slips over the free- arm which holds attachments for the machine. For most purposes this is okay, except not for quilting. It is definitely not a flat surface. At Wellington Symposium last year I was in Gloria Loughman's class and she was using one. To see it being used as opposed to just looking at it convinced me to get one. Using the Symposium Special I got my Sew Ezi table with a free accessory tray.

Let me tell you it has been a life-defining moment sewing with this table. Now that I have my machine flush with the table the quilting is so much easier, and no, the table does not rock. It is very sturdy, very portable and worth every penny. It has even made piecing so much easier having more room at the sewing level. I love the clear perspex insert and I have put the accessories I use most often into a little box which sits underneath the insert. Because I can see it I am not loosing the quarter inch foot, the free motion foot, the walking foot or the screw driver (most important, that bit.) The little circular indent on the front right hand side holds a glass of wine perfectly (vbg) There is plenty of room underneath for my legs and feet and I can sit directly in front of the needle. You couldn't give me a Horn cabinet now if you tried (well, hang on a minute, I might have to think that one through.) But seriously, these tables are so great I bought my friend Frances one for Christmas. She had bought me my Featherweight machine and I thought a substantial gift in return seemed appropriate at some stage.

UPDATE: I forgot to say that the price compares very favourably with any Horn cabinet I have seen advertised, about a quarter of the price There are no doors to get in the way when hefting a quilt around and the table is light and easy to move if I need to pull it out to get to the stuff that is stored in underneath.

Here is my machine nestled in its new home. Look how much flat surface I have:
You know the best thing I like about this table? See the hole which is the carry handle on the left hand side? It is the perfect distance, an arm's length away, for dropping cut-off threads into*. So I put a plastic bucket underneath to catch the threads. Now I have a lot less mess to clean up.

In the next picture I'm quilting a quilt for my son to take flatting next month. I hope to have it finished by the end of the week. You can see the yellow bucket underneath. Way to go!



* these threads are called 'orts' according the Southern Cross Quilters Yahoo group postings, a word I have never heard of. So I looked it up in my trusty old Concise Oxford Dictionary. The word ort, usually used in the plural orts, means refuse or scraps or leavings and dates back to the 15th century. You learn something new every day.

Twins!

My friend Ruth turned up the other night with this little baby (on the left) which is exactly like my little baby (on the right). We think they are the exact same model since both have the light switch in the exact same position and both have the Singer 50th commemoration plaque on the front. The code number on the bottom starts with different letter though. Ruth hadn't had time to search on the net for the year of her machine. Of my Friday night group 5 of us now have these little Featherweights. We shall have to have a light-as-air sew-in!

A sight for sore (quilting) eyes

I have not been on my computer in over a week to even read blogs, let alone make a post myself. School has been incredibly busy with 3 prize-givings in 2 days and junior exams (which I am still marking the tail end of - darn, still need to finish them before tomorrow!) Then I have to have my junior reports done by Wednesday and I had a bit of the 'lurgy' for a few days as well. I had to cancel my Friday night group, something I haven't done since we started it years ago. Needless to say I haven't touched the sewing machine either. To cheer myself up I am posting a photo from our Mystery Bus Trip which I am sure you will enjoy as much as I did.
This was the fence outside Griet Lombard's new home when we arrived (and I humbly apologise for incorrectly spelling her name in previous posts) and isn't that a sight to gladden the heart of any quilter?? What a fantastic welcome. I wonder what the neighbours were thinking (garage sale perhaps :-) or did Griet warn them, I wonder)?

It is interesting to see the sun was shining because about 20 minutes after we arrived the heavens opened and the rain pelted down. I was pleased to see Griet's husband Willem (I think I've got the spelling correct) had taken the quilts in before they got wet:-)

PS: Thanks to Judy for the photo and Griet for permission to post it

A bit of a brag

I had a lovely surprise yesterday when I checked my emails. The quilt I had accepted for the NANZQ Illumination Challenge has sold at the gallery in Whangarei. I won't get the dosh until June of next year, but somehow that is secondary to the delight in knowing that someone values my work.
Thanks to all in NANZQ who work so hard to give us challenges to work towards.

Quilty Weekends

I have had two really great quilty weekends in a row. Last weekend was our club's mystery bus trip and this time I wasn't the organiser. So I got to sit back and enjoy (well, 'sit back' probably isn't quite the most accurate description since I was driving one of the mini buses and it was a manual gear change and the ladies started counting how many bunny hops I did!) The day was fantastic and the highlight was visiting Greit Lombard. She made us feel very welcome and gave us THE best afternoon tea. Thank you Greit, your generosity was awesome!

I didn't take my camera on the bus trip so I have no piccies - darn!

Today I visited the Taranaki P&Q annual show. I loved Sharon Duthie's quilt "Inner Peace Evolving to Chaotic Existence" which won first prize in the 'Log Cabin with a Twist (wall hanging section) challenge. It was beautifully, beautifully hand quilted. Here is a detail shot:
I thought is was a well-deserved winner. And, yes, I did remember my camera this time.

Back to the more mundane things. I have finally finished this scrappy strip pieced quilt which I started a couple of years ago. I am calling it God's Eye because it reminds me of the "woven on two sticks with any scraps of wool we could find" God's Eye's we used to make as children. I think they are American Indian in origin (but don't quote me. I've been known to be wrong before, vbg!)
Only a million more scraps to use up :-)

Still Back Blogging!

Here I am, blogging again - two posts in three days! Can I keep it up?
Hmmm . . .
Anyway, the club raffle quilt top is now finished (yeah!) and is ready to be sent away to the quilter. I am so glad I don't have to do that job :-)
I think this quilt will look great on someone's bed. I hope everyone we ask to buy a ticket does too.

It was our Mystery Bus Trip yesterday and we had a fantastic time. I'll post about it next time. Unfortunately yours truly forgot her camera so I am going to have to beg some photos from someone else, otherwise there will not be much eye candy.

Cheers!

Back to Blogging !!

Well, I have been a really hopeless blogger this year. My visitor stats have gone way down, as can only be expected when I don't blog for 6 weeks! I have actually been quilting and have a few things to show you but I will drip feed them otherwise it will be another 6 weeks before the next post.

I have just finished two weeks of school holiday and since the weather was horrible nearly the whole time it has been a perfect opportunity to quilt. I used the first week to cut pieces for Cotton On Quilters next raffle quilt. It is a design from an Australian Patchwork and Quilting magazine Vol 16 #8, called Westward Ho! It was designed by Frances Leate. We emailed her to ask permission to use her design, which she willingly gave and it is a good thing she did because she alerted us to the fact that the templates for the design in the magazine had been reproduced at the wrong size. I'm not criticising the magazine at all. It is a huge task to publish patterns in a magazine and even when you think you've got it right it the gremlins can take over while you are not looking.

I organised the cut pieces into bags for people to sew into blocks and we made very good progress. The first picture is of the borders in progress:
And this is the body of the quilt:
We changed the centre block from the original design because we thought it had too much white space and it was an Ohio star, rather than a 54-40 or Fight star. We like the result. I have now put the borders on and I just need to put up my big design wall so I can take a decent photo of it. We will then send it away to be quilted. It is so good to have this done so far in advance of our next exhibition which is not until March 2011. I'm not working to such a tight deadline this time :-)

At least it wasn't a finger. . .

You know how they say to be very, very careful when wielding the rotary cutter? (Don't worry - remember what the title of this post is.) Well, I was busy on Saturday night cutting strips for a quilt I am going to be making at our up-coming retreat at the end of the month (yippee, it will be the first weekend of the school holidays - what a great way to start them). I layered up the fabric to cut 2 fabrics at once. When cutting strips it is oh, so, easy to get the ruler not lined up quite correctly, like this:
It's a bit hard to see what is wrong so here is a close-up:
Now can you see? I'm 3 1/2" on one end of the ruler and 3 1/4" on the other end. Blast! I need an extra strip. So I cut one, without checking what was going on at the other end of the fabric. When I flipped back the top fabric this is what I had oh, so, cleverly done:
The perfect 'V' cut!
As my friend Frances said "at least it wasn't your finger". No, it wasn't :-)

But I did manage to take the top off the knuckle off my index finger when closing a door at school today. Ouch!

Frustration!

I know different quilt show clubs/venues/organisations have a different variety of quilt stands available to use, but this is really frustrating. The first set of instructions are for attaching velcro to the back of the quilt for Symposium earlier this year.

You probably can't read the words but it says the soft side of the velcro is sewn to the hanging sleeve of the quilt and the hook side is pressed to that. That was quite easy. The soft side of velcro on the back of my quilt wasn't too hard to sew.

The next set of instructions are for Quilt Aotearoa which is being held in Hamilton in a couple of weeks time.

Notice the difference?

Yep, I had to remove the hanging sleeve from my quilt, remove the soft-sided velcro, remove the name label from the hook side of the velcro, sew the hook side onto the hanging sleeve, sew the hanging sleeve back to the quilt and sew the name label back onto the soft side of the velcro. Let me tell you, hand stitching a hanging sleeve onto the back of a 2.2 metre wide quilt with the hook side of velcro sewn onto it is no fun at all! The thread kept snagging on the hooks of the velcro and I kept cursing :-)

Still, I got it done and sent the quilt off. I just have to wait to see if it has been accepted.

It's a finish!

Yes, I finished a quilt.

No, it's not the Ugly, Ugly one. (But maybe this quilt might be in the running to win the Ugly, Ugly prize??)

This is a quilt for a 7 year boy called Brian who likes sport. I don't know Brian but I hope he likes the quilt he is going to receive. Our community quilts project this year is to make quilts for children who are under the care of the Open Home Foundation. They provide respite foster care for children at risk. We were given a list of first names, ages and interests from which we could choose someone to make a quilt for. I really like this idea of making it more personal.
The name of the quilt is "Golf Plaid Here". The green fabric is a print of golfing motifs. Sporting themed fabric (indeed, any 'boys' fabric) is a bit hard to come by. I found the golf fabric in one of our local shops. I had probably been there for a while because it was very reasonably priced t under $20 per metre. There was just enough left on the bolt for this single bed sized quilt. I drew up the woven stripe pattern and it was pieced with partial seams. It took a while to figure out how to put it together with the least mucking around and the most chain piecing, but once I had it worked out I got the top done in 2 sewing sessions. I can't say I love it I don't like that particular shade of red) but I trust Brian will like it enough to cuddle up in it.

Ugly, Ugly?

Do you ever find yourself making a quilt which seemed a good idea at the time, but when you get nearly all the way through you decide it is the most hideous thing you have ever seen? I was trying to come up with a relatively simple design for a beginner quilt using just half square triangles and a minimum amount of cutting. I came up with this:

Now, the maths of this really appealed to me. 8 fabrics of 1/2 metre each in a 'rainbow' effect. With an extra metre to do the extra strips at the top and bottom, making a total of 5 metres of fabric. Cutting was easy, with 8 triangles from a width-of-fabric strip. Piecing was easy, big triangles, not too many pieces. No border, just needs a binding after quilting. Comes out at single bed size - great size to make. Easy to quilt if you do zig zag lines. Simple huh? So simple I cut another one out of floral fabrics before I pieced this one together.

So why do I hate it? It is very bright, much brighter than this picture shows. It probably looks better on a bed than it does in the vertical plane. But it is just not 'doing it' for me. It has been hanging around my sewing area half quilted and I just can't get enthused to do any more. Mind you I am free motion quilting it fairly densely. I am considering it quilting practice. I'm doing different free-motion pattern in each of the colours. I will get there in the end. The floral one is still languishing in pieces, aaarrgh!

Great Tutorial

No picture today, but at least it is a post! I want to recommend you visit my friend, Janice's blog. She has just posted a great tutorial explaining how to make an original quilt from a photo. The thing is, I could have been watching the tutorial for real because Janice and Frances have just completed a 3 part Techniques Training at Cotton On Quilters yesterday (and for June and July) but I chose to sew instead of watching, how dumb is that? The thing I am excited about, though, is the use that Janice makes of Press and Seal. Brilliant! Check it out You will need to read some text, but it comes with pictures :-)

Yep, It's August Already!

Totally, totally slack I have been. Three months since making a post. I won't be surprised if there is no one still looking out for me, but I'm going to give it another go to stay connected to the virtual quilting world. I have just spent the last 3-4 hours updating the Cotton On Quilters blog with 3 month's worth of Show & Tell, so take a hike over there if you are in the mood for a quilt show.

I have actually been doing some quilting. My friend Rosie from school discovered at the beginning of the year she was pregnant. Remember the "I'd rather be 40 than pregnant" coffee mugs that used to be around a few years ago? Rosie is proof that the pill does not always work. Rosie and her husband have 2 children already. Daughter, aged 15, was highly disgusted when told the news and had to ask Dad if he knew about the 'birds and the bees'. I think there was also some discussion about 'the snip' :-) Never mind, the baby arrived on Wednesday. I haven't met her yet but her name is Kaylee Grace and I made this quick quilt for her: